MIT Professor Claims Social Networks Make Us 'Less Human'

A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor has claimed that social networking platforms are making people 'less human'.

In her book titled 'Alone Together', sociologist Sherry Turkle writes that the way in which people frantically communicate with each other social networking platforms Twitter and Facebook represents a modern form of madness.

“A behaviour that has become typical may still express the problems that once caused us to see it as pathological,” she wrote in the book.

Turkle said that social networking websites are isolating humans from the real-world under the pre-text of allowing them to communicate with each other. She said that technology was robbing us of a real human interaction, The Telegraph reports.

“We have invented inspiring and enhancing technologies, yet we have allowed them to diminish us,” Turkle wrote.

The warnings come as a surprise to some, as two of her previous books shone a positive light on the benefits of technology.